Story:Kings of Strife/Part 1
Part One Singun Crono Silverius sat cross-legged on the train leading him to the international artifact he was going to steal. The vehicle was a slim, minimalistic bullet of an object, one of the most popular transportation methods throughout the hyper-industrialized nation of Inusia. Silverius had always loved trains, and found rest easy on them, but not this day. His muscles were tense with preparation, his mind constantly racing on the objective before him. His sword was wrapped in canvas and held at his side. Weapons were forbidden on trains, which counted as Inusian public transport, but were generally easy to smuggle in. Silverius held the blade close and tight, his hands awaiting movement. There were no enemies in the car around him, but he was ready for what was going to happen later on. Silverius would be lucky if the night did not contain a fight, or if his life did not end before sunrise. The slim train sped along the rocky west Inusian coast towards Inusia City, and outside the windows faded a pale blue sky. By name, Inusia City was the capital of the country, but the real government power was seated in the north-east coast of the country, across hundreds of miles of desert and rocks. All that the City had of significance was the heart of the military, with dozens of barracks and thousands of blue-caped soldiers in their ranks. Silverius knew the city well. At the center of the city, tall with blue-painted buildings and steel roads, was a building larger and taller than any other. Known simply as the Inusian Tower, or even the Tower, it was built in the days of King Leon IV, centuries and centuries ago, and the citadel of Inusia was built around it. The Tower was crucial to Inusian intelligence, and held military secrets, records, treaties, and documents that could not be found anywhere else. As a result, it was perhaps the most heavily guarded building in the country. Silverius’ mission was to break into the Tower, steal a crystal, and escape. It seemed impossible – he thought it was. But his job was not to question, or to fear. He only got paid to act. Fifteen thousand dolarov. That was how much he was getting paid to break into one of the most high security installations in the world. That wasn’t even enough to live on for a year… but Silverius had no other choice. Whatever the organization paid him to do was done. That was his duty as a mercenary. Rain began to slap on the pavement as the train grinded to a halt at the northernmost train station in the city. There were few passengers leaving the train with him, but Silverius kept himself from appearing suspicious to the guards watching over the train’s exit. There were no documents or items on his person, besides his blade, that would arouse suspicion. The Leader had written him incredibly detailed maps and descriptions. As Silverius walked the steel streets, he raised his hood over his head full of black hair and looked about with surprise. The city had not changed in the few years since he had been there, but there were many places and spots he could not traverse from memory. The Leader of his mercenary organization had predicted this, and the maps he drew to direct Silverius were perfectly accurate. The mercenary had to memorize them and burn them to remove any evidence, which was no problem, but it was striking just how well put-together the intelligence for this mission was. It was as if the Leader had been on the city’s streets and charted exactly what he saw. The further he went into the city, the more apparent his objective grew in the horizon. The unoriginally named Tower was a very old artifact and a marvel of antique architecture, considering how amazingly tall it was and how structurally sound it was. He was very close to the Tower now, so close that he could no longer approach it above ground, or he would be confronted by a 360 degree guard. Because penetration was completely impossible that way, the references from his employer detailed a simplistic and predictable infiltration in his instructions. In fact, the infiltration was so basic that it was, in a way, unpredictable. Silverius was to break into the supply sewers beneath the Tower, attack a soldier and steal their uniform, and infiltrate the facility. It was with a morbid heart and a determined grip on his blade, long since discarded of the canvas hiding it, that Silverius snuck into the dank underground and began to walk with caution among the darkness of the sewers. The sewers beneath the city were as dark and foul as one would have expected. Putrid odors tingled Silverius’ nostrils and his blade’s hand began to cramp his hand, but he did not let any of these sensations distract him. After wading through black sewer water for a few minutes, he finally came upon a ladder and climbed into the high plateau of concrete bordering each side of the sewer’s river. This, too, was predicted and detailed by the Leader. His black coat, grey pants, and black boots allowed Silverius to move about in the darkness without difficulty staying hidden. The cold steel of his gunblade, however, was ivory white and easily visible. He kept it behind him, hidden. On the right side of the tunnel, the side he walked on, a blue-caped Inusian soldier sat watching over the sewers with droopy eyes, his rifle in his lap – exactly as the Leader described it. It was easy for Silverius to sneak behind the drowsy soldier, thrust the sharp end of his sword into his fleshy neck, and slash it horizontally, cutting the soldier’s throat and ending his life without any screams. The blood flowed freely into the dark waters below and only barely marred his clothes. After a minute of allowing the blood to flow, Silverius undressed the soldier and took his blue cloak and sash, leaving his own black coat behind. Now, he would look like an Inusian soldier to most who observed him in passing. Killing was never the hard part of his job. Silverius was used to taking lives, and had never shed so much as a shiver after his childhood. After the murder of his father. He met no further resistance once he left his weapon behind and followed the maps to a basement that led upwards to a supply elevator. As he rode the supply elevator up to floor 75, the Crystal floor, Silverius found himself wondering how exactly a sewer with one guard and an unlocked supply elevator could be anything close to “maximum security”. Of course, it was possible that such a legend was perpetuated to scare off any potential intruders… But it was not in Silverius’ job description to think. Only to act. The directions only had information up to floor 5, but the Leader stated Silverius would know what he was to do once he emerged at the Crystal floor. Apparently there was only one chamber that resided on Floor 75, and it would be easy for him to enter. As he departed from the elevator once it arrived at its destination, it appeared this observation would be correct. The only defining feature of the wide floor, steel and sterile in its uniformity, was that it led towards a solitary door after a long solid corridor. There was no label over the door, but it was obvious that it could only be one room, and could only hold one object. As he walked down the quiet and uniform floor to his objective, Silverius found himself feeling… uneasy. The air was eerie, the halls too quiet and the pelting of rain on the outside too light. This was too easy. He wasn’t sure, though, if he was walking into a trap… or if Inusia’s strongest military fortress was simply not that strong. Now was not the time for such thoughts, though, and if he met trouble he could always fight his way out of it. He had not been bested in a fight for years. There was no lock as Silverius opened the door. What he saw inside the Crystal Room fascinated him. Never in his life had Silverius seen such a display of beauty and almost unnatural wonder. The room was wide and completely open, as if taking up the entire width of the Tower. Its walls were a fair distance away in every direction except behind him. What was most amazing to him was the fact that the name of the chamber seemed to magically match its name; the floor and walls and even the ceiling shone with a beautiful cerulean and looked like they were made of pure crystalline gems. Every fragile step he took made a slight click and his shadow was reflected vaguely across a billion different surfaces. After a moment of breathless gazing, Silverius found his eyes gravitating to an object far off directly in front of him. Here was the object that the room was truly named for. Upon gazing his eyes upon it, Silverius found himself entranced by the object’s beauty, and he knew instinctively why it was so precious. The crystal shone with a lighter glow than that of the sapphire home it found itself in, and was about the size of his fist. It floated over a circle of foreign letters that harked of alchemical symbols. So brilliant was the object and its impossible perch that it seemed to openly spit in the face of logic. It was magic, for lack of a better word. There was no longer any wonder on why this was such a precious stone. Silverius felt an awe that eclipsed anything he had felt before as he unconsciously grasped the object. Instantly he regretted this action, but it was too late to take it back, and the unearthly glow around the crystal vanished before his eyes. The circle beneath the crystal lost its light as well, and it ceased to float and instead took up weight in his hands. The entire room lost its luster, he imagined, although he hoped it was a figment of his imagination. Breathlessly he glanced around the wide and now lonely room before stumbling back towards the exit. He hoped without hope that the rest of the assignment would go as planned. So fervent was his thoughts that he began to feel fear as he left the Crystal Room. There were no pockets on him, so until he got to his coat and bags in the sewers, he would be labeled an intruder upon first sight. It would be difficult to fight with the large Crystal in his hand, as well… Within moments he arrived at the elevator, and a long staircase that descended and ascended was to his right. Silverius tapped with impatience at the buttons as it asked for his keycard and identification. Despair grinned at him as he searched his pockets with his free hand. The keycard that came within the dead soldier’s sash was missing. “Shit,” Silverius growled to himself, “I must have dropped it in the Crystal Room!” He started to run back and retrieve it when the elevator made a noise behind him. His dark brown eyes widened as they watched the number counter for the elevator’s passengers rise closer and closer to his current floor. 68, 69, 70, 71… Silverius was frozen with fear. “It’ll just go past my floor, I know it will, it must…” It did not. Silverius could not move and panicked as the elevator door opened. The soldier who was inside of the now opening elevator looked at Silverius with a casual curiosity before glancing down at the crystal in his hands. His expression soon devolved into disbelief as he dropped the papers in his hands. Silverius only moved upon hearing his “comrade” exclaim at him. Then he jumped with breathless speed and pure instinct, an unconscious decision he would very soon come to regret. Without even considering the possibility of pursuit, Singun C. Silverius put his free hand in front of him and used it as a vault to jump clear over the rail on the side of the hallway and push himself down the empty space in the middle of the Tower’s large spiral staircase. As soon as the chaos and fanaticism had begun, the floor grew deathly silent. Silverius could vividly sense the man behind him watching with his mouth wide open as he watched Silverius grow smaller and smaller in the chasm. Time seemed to slow as well once Silverius realized what he had done – a 75 floor drop would kill him instantly upon arrival. Certain death awaited him at the bottom of the Tower. He was being paid to succeed. Failure was not an option, and this was not the day Silverius wanted to die. “Not like this!” He rejected his fate and acted on instinct all in one swift movement. Unraveling the blue sash from his wait, Silverius struck out as if it were a whip in order to catch upon the railing and somehow stop himself in the air. It missed completely the first time and only served to screw with his righted position. Now he was face down and flat, slowing his fall but bringing the quickly oncoming ground even more into focus. He had about a second left, if that, and no time for thought. Again he struck out with the belt, fearful yet determined as the air buffeted his face, and this time he succeeded. The makeshift whip accomplished its job and wrapped around the railing to an adjacent staircase, but couldn’t hold his weight for longer than a second. It jerked him back into the air in a sort of bounce and agony from the fall pierced through his left arm. So strong was the sensation of pain that he was left speechless and his right hand opened, letting the crystal fly higher into the air. The belt opened and Silverius fell again, now with his back towards the ground. There would be no stopping his fall this time with his posture all out of whack, and even if he saved himself, the Crystal would fall to the ground and shatter into pieces. Silverius accepted his failure and his death in one breath, and landed on the ground with a hard crash in the next. The jolt was ultimately harmless. Somehow, the last strike with the sash-whip had removed most of his velocity, and the resulting fall was nowhere near fatal. He would live another day. In the next breath, the crystal landed harmlessly on his chest and did not bounce. The man lay with eyes wide open and arms outstretched, motionless from pain and stress and disbelief. The pain in his left shoulder was overwhelming, but even stronger was the amazing sensation of relief when he realized that he was indeed alive, somehow. He would have stayed in that spot for hours, recovering and licking his wounds, but soon he began to hear echoes and yelps. Voices from floors far above, voices of soldiers. His mission flooded back into his mind, along with the urgency of his situation, and Silverius stood in a hurry. From his fall, Silverius had landed on the bottom floor of the Tower, which was still one floor above the basement and two above the sewers. The only things around him was the ascending staircase, his discarded sash, and a metal door leading to the rest of the floor. Silverius opened it slowly, moving deliberately due to caution and the pain in his body. What had felt like a simple bump was likely perceived as such due to the adrenaline running through his veins; Silverius was sure he was still badly hurt despite the deterrence to his speed. Outside the staircase’s room, Silverius found himself in a small lobby like room with a mahogany desk overlooking two doors opposite him. One of them had the icon of an elevator; the other was a separate staircase descending downwards. The desk had no occupants seated behind it, likely due to the stir Silverius had caused more than 70 stories above. Wasting no idle time on his aches, Silverius ducked into the descending maintenance stairs and quickly ran down the last two floors. From there, his escape was void of any obstacles and issues. He threw the dead soldier into the sewer river after leaving his sash and cloak on the corpse; he re-wrapped his blade in canvas after leaving the building; he made it to the train station and boarded the last night train to Morshia City without being strip-searched. In other words, he succeeded. As he lay his head down on the window in the deserted train car, droplets of rain gliding down his cheeks and his chest rising with anxious breaths, Silverius wondered what would happen to him next. Would the Leader care if he had been noticed? Surely Inusia would notice the loss of the Crystal, and surely it would be a national incident – the Crystal had to be massively important to require its prison to be the Tower of all places. Would Silverius be able to step foot anywhere in Inusia again after a crime of this magnitude? So many questions flooded through Silverius’ mind, but they were soon drowned out by his ragged exhaustion, and the mercenary slept peacefully for the rest of his journey. ***** The man in the red coat stood in his alleyway and leaned on the wall of the adjacent building. He had felt something of an attachment to this alleyway in recent hours. It was nice and quiet, distant from the bustling streets yet close enough to the city that he could still smell the industrial air. He had to stay away from people most of the time or he’d lose control of himself again. Not that he was opposed to that happening. The man in the red coat was a violent, unpredictable cyclone of hatred. Idly he ran his hand through his long, unkempt and curly red hair. It matched his coat. It suited him. Red was the color of blood, of freed intestines and severed arteries. Red was his favorite color. He heard a step and sensed a presence. His head tilted slightly to his right, a strand of long hair tilting over his face. The man couldn’t decide if he was angry or elated at the new person coming to greet him, and so he said nothing but stared at where he knew the person was. Nothing moved for a moment and so he spoke. “Reveal yourself.” There was another moment of hesitant silence before a figure moved from behind the dumpster in the alleyway. The man in red examined and quickly identified the persona before him. The man opposite him was just a boy, with a hairless face and a scrawny build. The navy blue mantle that covered his slate gray Inusian military uniform was pinned behind the boy’s back, like a cape. The boy shivered, but not from the cold. The man in the red knew it was not from the cold – the two of them were in Phenicks, a large Shorican city some 200 miles west from Inusia City and only 40 miles from the Inusian border. This close to the Queen’s Gulf, warm sea breezes kept the air permanently warm and amiable. No, the boy was shivering from fear. The man in the red coat smiled. Good. He was right to fear. “Inusian soldiers in a Shorican city? That’s odd.” The man in the red crossed his arms and looked the Inusian boy over. “Well, are you going to introduce yourself or are you going to arrest me?” While most people would have been outraged or at least irritated by the man in red’s disrespectful conduct, especially one employed in the military for the world’s most powerful country, the soldier before him was understandably silent. He was standing in front of one of the world’s most dangerous criminals. He was standing in front of the Crimson Death. Few men were able to commit murder and walk across the world freely. Few men could boast having fought against soldiers of every militarized country, and lived to tell the tale. Fewer still could say they were international criminals wanted for countless acts of murder, arson, sodomy, and torture – yet received no legal persecution due to the law’s fear of them. Only the Crimson Death could make these claims and be telling the absolute truth. His extended survival was paramount to the rumor that he was immortal and invulnerable, mostly because of how many lethal ambushes the Death had survived. Perhaps most disturbingly, the Crimson Death usually held on his sharp and angular face a misguided grin and leisurely hazy eyes, no matter what he was doing or who he killed – almost as if he took joy from his inhumane acts. The Inusian soldier stood with full understanding of who was in front of him. He dared not speak a word but to his gods, praying frantically even as the Crimson Death removed himself from his perch on the alley wall and sauntered towards him. His shivering intensified and threatened to cause him to fall straight down to the ground. The much taller Crimson Death arrived at his presence and faintly touched him, further inducing a statement of terrifying fear. “Well? Aren’t you going to answer me… boy?” The soldier froze, cold down to his bones, as the Crimson Death hovered his sharp nose near his prey and looked him over hungrily. “You don’t want me to have to repeat myself.” Now the soldier opened his mouth and spoke as he grabbed the bill of his tall hat and pulled it over his eyes. He shut them and tried to focus on what he had been told to say instead of worrying about the mass murderer who stood inches away from him. His instructors had told him the Crimson Death would be provoked to violence if introduced with repetition. Focusing in the presence of such a being was incredibly difficult. “I-I-I was t-t-told that you had a job proposition,” the young soldier managed to stammer. “An artifact was stolen from our government and w-we’re prepared to pay you anything in order to retrieve it, n-no matter w-what.” Having spoken his mantra, the boy stuck his chest out slightly but did not open his eyes. The fear hadn’t escaped just yet, even with the small moment of triumph he felt. The Crimson Death turned around and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his long coat. “Let me see… you’d be willing to compensate me with anything? Very well. I request… 3 million dolarov. And the youngest virgin daughter of your king. Fair enough?” The latter was meant as a joke, but the soldier took it at face value. The crimson man looked at the soldier’s profile with a barely masked face of mocking amusement, but the soldier showed no means of allowing any emotion stain his fearful face. “We’re prepared to pay you anything. Sir.” The man in red, in response to the soldier’s rehearsed response, threw his head back and laughed. “Where would I even go to retrieve it? And why hire me instead of handling this internally?” “We have reason to believe the suspect has incredible strength and durability. Dealing with him may cause…” The soldier visibly hesitated. “A confrontation may cause unwanted casualties.” “Casualties?!” The man in red looked back and glared at the soldier. “So Inusia is willing to pay me, the most wanted man in the world, to take care of a criminal – because he might kill too many pretty little bluecoats?” The soldier only gulped and looked down at his black combat boots. The Crimson Death let out a bellowing laugh that echoed through the darkness of Phenicks. “Well then… Tell your commanding officers that I accept. They know the way to a man’s heart is through his purse strings! I will retrieve this artifact to you, if it is so important. And there will be blood whilst I do so. Where is my target headed at the moment, boy?” “Our last sighting of the subject was of him boarding a train to Morshia City, sir. This intelligence was from some hours ago… It’s possible that he may or may not have left the city from there.” “Hmph. Alright then, I suppose I’ll start there. Thank you for this opportunity, child.” The Crimson Death crossed his arms conclusively and closed his eyes in thought. After a minute or two, he glanced at the soldier, who was still rooted to his spot. A few seconds of awkward tension led to a disgruntled and angry persona shifting over the Crimson Death’s appearance. Gone in a second was his mocking, nonchalant grin, only to be replaced by arched eyebrows and angry veins protruding from his forehead. The Death let his hands rest on the two sword handles resting on the back of his waist, their blades sheltered in sheaths and attached to his waist by a belt. The noise from their shifting was audible and quite noticeable, and the soldier, petrified, began to violently shake once again. The man in red spat out his next words with almost uncharacteristic bile and violence. “I said you could leave, you skinny bureaucratic sack of meat.” The soldier stood for half a second more before he turned and began to vault towards the exit of the alleyway, false courage finally allowing him to move. The young soldier finally opened his eyes and allowed himself to grin – he was free! His lover was the last thing on the boy’s mind, for in that split second he passed by the Crimson Death, a long broadsword hacked into the soldier’s back and knocked him from his feet. By the time he landed face down onto the ground a moment later, blood was already splattered on the walls of the narrow alleyway and a long and deep cut was carved into the small of the soldier’s back. The Crimson Death stood over him with a shadow over his eyes. “I told you once to leave and you did not listen. Those who must be repeated to are either ignoring me or are mentally incompetent… And I cannot allow either to live.” With this, he unsheathed the second of his two broadswords and began to violently slash and stab at the corpse with both weapons. He would not stop for another hour, at which time the body was mutilated beyond recognition and he was once again covered in blood. His grin never ceased. ...End of Part 1. <- Prologue | Main Page | Next Page ->